Catching the Music
by SerendipityClarke
Summary: A series of one-shots between Tsukimiya Ringo and Nanami Haruka.
1. Of Mascara and Blushes

Of Mascara and Blushes

Ringo sat patiently at his vanity table, coating his eyelashes in mascara, when he felt someone staring at him. Knowing who it was and where said person was the last time he looked, Ringo put the brush back into the mascara tube and turned to look at the bed. "What is it, Haruka?"

Haruka, who had been kneeling on the bed with the covers bunched around her waste, blushed slightly at being caught staring, but refused to stop despite that. "I was just thinking how amazing make-up is," she replied shyly.

"How so?" asked Ringo with a brow artfully curled upwards.

"Well, it just takes a wig and some make-up, and you look so different," Haruka said, referring to Ringo's masculine form.

Ringo giggled slightly, brushing a few strands of fake pink hair out of his eyes. "Yes, well, I guess you could say make-up is similar to magic. The make-up artist is rather like the fairy godmother in Cinderella, then, huh?"

At this, Haruka finally looked down at her lap, shyness overcoming her. Not knowing what brought this on, Ringo frowned and furrowed his brows. Anxious, Ringo thought desperately to find a way to bring Haruka back out of the shell he'd spent over a year forcing her out of—the shell that had made it so incredibly difficult to win her over and had made his conquest of her fail horribly until only a month ago. Ringo had to get her out of that shell, absolutely _had _to.

Suddenly, a thought occurred to him, and he immediately knew both what had made her shrink into her shell and how to get her out of it. Smiling, he put the mascara down on the vanity table and moved over to the bed, standing tall above her.

"Haruka," he called out softly. "Look up at me."

Haruka fidgeted a moment before shyly looking up at Ringo through her bangs. Ringo grabbed at the chance and reached down to hold her face there. He soon leaned forward so that their noses brushed but their lips were a couple of inches apart.

"Haruka," he repeated, "that doesn't necessarily make you ugly underneath if you wear make-up. If so, I'd be hideously ugly, and I most _certainly _am not." Ringo huffed this remark out, his breath sweeping across Haruka's face, causing her to blush a little more darkly. "Besides," he continued, "you look great without make-up—you're bound to look like a goddess with it."

"Ah…" Haruka mumbled under her breath. "I only ever use lip-gloss or lipstick, though…" she admitted.

A slight smirk grew across Ringo's face at this. "It's as good a place as any to start, I guess." He pressed his nose firmly against hers. "Now then, let's spread some of my lip-gloss onto you to begin, shall we?"

Haruka's eyes widened in shock and her cheeks flushed in embarrassment as his words sunk in, but before she had the chance to protest in any way, Ringo slipped his nose to the side and pressed his lips against hers. Quickly, he began attempts to coax responses from the lips of the girl beneath him. Several moments later, Haruka found her way out of her shock and began to softly press her lips back against this.

Feeling this, Ringo prevented a groan from slipping out his throat and rested a palm on each side of Haruka's body, preventing her escape. He opened his lips slightly, licking hers, asking her to open her own. She complied after a moment's hesitation, and Ringo had to grip the covers tightly in his hands in order to ensure he did not go any farther than just moving his mouth against hers, regardless of how sensually. It was hard to remind himself at times, but Haruka was completely innocent, both in matters of the heart and in matters of the body. And he would not cross boundaries she was not ready to.

A minute or two of sensual kissing later, Ringo pulled away. He opened the eyes he had unwittingly closed and noted that hers had closed as well. When finally her eyes opened, they were filled with a combination of emotions that told Ringo that she had to tell him something. He raised his brows and smiled in invitation.

"You…" she started, "didn't… put on the lip-gloss yet."

Ringo's smile quickly turned into a smirk as he raised himself off of the bed. "It appears I didn't," he said lightly before he walked back to the vanity table. Before sitting down again, he looked over his shoulder at the blushing girl, winked, and made one more remark. "Worth it, though."

Though he could not see it, he knew she had nearly tipped over from embarrassment and had to force himself not to laugh. Then, a though came to him and he had to restrain himself from frowning, as she could see his face through the mirror.

_She really does need a little more self-confidence, doesn't she?_

He sighed before going back to his make-up, with a beet-red girl watching not quite as intensely as before as her mind was otherwise occupied.

Honestly, he'd seen so many different talented girls while he was teaching. That he had chosen Haruka out of all of them should have been enough to boost her measly ego… Still, he would never say this out loud, as there was the probability that she would only grasp onto the thought that he had been her teacher less than a year ago and would fall into her shell once again, ruining all his hard work. And that was unacceptable.

Besides, maybe if she had even a slightly bigger ego, she'd be in his bed in the morning for more scandalous reasons not because she'd fallen asleep while they were watching movies on it. A sly smirk grew across his face at the thought. Ah, how he adored his imagination. And Haruka. _Especially_ Haruka.


	2. Of Patience, Perseverence, and Dedicatio

Of Patience, Perseverance, and Dedication

It had taken only three things, in the end, to win over Haruka Nanami's heart: patience, perseverance, and dedication—and although it could be said that the three are the same, they are not.

Patience deals with waiting. Waiting for something to happen. Waiting for the right time _for_ something to happen. Waiting for nothing to happen at all. It doesn't matter what kind of waiting, so long as there is much waiting and there is still a certain kind of calmness at the end.

Perseverance, on the other hand, has to do with actions that lead to the realization of an aspiration. Positive actions. Negative actions. Neutral actions. Nonetheless, all kinds are actions, and so long as one continues to act in order to reach a goal, there is perseverance.

Dedication depends upon concentration. Concentrating on a goal. Concentrating on the steps to reach that goal. Concentrating on a person, or a thing. So long as one is concentrating nearly solely on whatever thing, person, or goal, one is dedicated to it.

In a nutshell, patience involves doing nothing until something happens, perseverance involves doing everything you can so that something happens, and dedication involves focusing everything you can on whatever's happening. And Ringo Tsukimiya was gifted with them all. Thus, Haruka Nanami was won over by him.

You may be wondering, at this point, how these three gifts were used in order to win such a treasure over. You also may not be wondering. I shall tell you regardless.

Patience was used while waiting for Haruka to graduate from her academy, so that their relationship would not be publicly frowned upon by society, not to mention by the principal of said academy. At the same time, perseverance was used while Ringo continued to help Haruka with anything she found difficult in school, which secured Ringo's place in her heart as an important person. Perseverance was also used in attempts to keep the six boys aiming for said heart at bay.

Dedication was not used until the day of the last senior play about a wedding wherein Haruka was given the role of the bride. When Ringo saw her in that flowing white wedding gown, he knew that he no longer simply wanted to woo and date her, but to marry her, so as to have her by his side for the rest of his life. After a few weeks of denial, Ringo's focus had shifted permanently to her and the thought of her as his wife. The dedication born from this focus was used everyday from then to the last day of his life.

Both patience and perseverance were used together in order to get Haruka to spend more time with him. Patience, to find the right time to ask her out to eat, or to watch a movie. Perseverance, to ask every time that "right time" came around, without fail.

Patience came into great play in getting Haruka used to the male form of Ringo. It took many, many months in order to relax her shoulders around this form. Ringo later found out that it wasn't the fact that he was a man that made her so nervous, but the fact that he looked _so different _compared to how she was used to seeing him. He didn't know whether to be insulted that she had been so natural around him at the academy because she felt he didn't count as a man, complimented because of the obvious praise to his make-up artistry, relieved that she finally felt he was a man worthy of her nervousness, miffed that she felt nervous around him at all, or some odd combination of all four.

After she had accepted his masculinity, however, the perseverance shined in its full potential as he did anything and everything, short of forcing her, to get her to date him, then later kiss him.

In the end, however, dedication was what signed the deal in terms of winning Haruka over. Or rather, winning her hand in marriage. The dedication to her that he'd had for so many years had finally seeped into her head, so when he popped the question and she'd recollected all the time he'd spent wooing her, she could see that his focus had never wandered from her. This, in turn, reminded her of her own slowly-grown dedication to him, and, of course, she said yes.

Now, a year after their wedding day, patience, perseverance, and dedication were making themselves known in Ringo's attempts to accomplish his new goal: have children with his beautiful wife.

-:-:-:-

A/N: I'll have you know two things: One, this was written right before bedtime. Two, I am in desperate need of a new title for these drabbles/oneshots/writing fails. Help me?


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